Alongside these bright talents is a dark history of prejudice and discrimination. Post-war practices of redlining and restrictive covenants effectively forced Black people to the Central District. This makes displacement of longtime residents today particularly painful. In the early 1970s, the Central District was 70 percent African-American. Today it’s 18 percent.

Africatown is a community group working to strengthen the African-American presence in the Central District and nurture what’s “beautiful, brilliant and best” in the region’s African diaspora—socially, artistically and economically.

In 2016, Africatown asked Forterra to help secure keystone land at 23rd Avenue and East Union Street—the epicenter of the neighborhood, and a place fraught with controversy over differing redevelopment plans. Months of negotiations succeeded in an agreement to acquire a portion of the block for affordable housing, neighborhood-based businesses and organizations and space for community gatherings. Now, Africatown and Forterra are teaming up with Capitol Hill Housing, a nonprofit housing developer, on next steps.

Below: reactions from neighborhood residents about the impending change.

Reactions from the neighborhood residents and business owners about the impending changes at 23rd & Union in Seattle's Central District.

Illustration by Olivia Stephens

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Related Perspectives — Ampersand

Ampersand celebrates people and place in the Pacific Northwest. It explores the scientific and the quirky found in our natural and built environments. It highlights the art, ideas and stories that elevate our region.

Ampersand is dedicated to the curious and the creative, to the thinkers and the doers, and to all those who love this maddeningly beautiful place we call home.

Luis and Leona Rodriguez met at Seattle’s Nathan Hale High School. Some 20-plus years later, the couple operates The Station, one of Seattle’s most popular independent coffee shops, in the heart of their longtime neighborhood of Beacon Hill. The baristas—African American, transgender—whip spicy Mexican mochas from behind the counter while Kendrick Lamar or old-school Big Daddy Kane plays on the speakers. Opened in 2010, The Station welcomes people of all backgrounds—the parent with a baby, the campaign organizer, the musician planning the annual Block Party.

Long gone are the days when Seattle could be characterized as some sleepy, ho-hum, turn-out-the-lights sort of place. So what to make of our city’s feverish pace of change? Are we truly San Francisco Next? Are we (ahem) better than that? We decided to ask.

The assembling, the forging, the hoisting, the pulverizing, the razing — it’s either the glorious roar of prosperity or the vociferous din of a city losing its soul. We may not agree about all the change that is happening but I’d argue we agree on what we value in Seattle.

So what do I know about cities? This: Build cities for people, and then all the rest follows. Commerce, culture, innovation, efficiency — all of it. Just start and end by building them for us — all of us. It’s that simple, writes Gene Duvernoy.